Algiers revive protest music

A quick browse through Algiers’ website is a dizzying experience. The trio’s home page features an intricate collage of musical influences, political texts, and miscellaneous ideas making up its dense, unclassifiable sound. The group features Franklin James Fisher (vocals, guitar, piano, and percussion), Ryan Mahan (vocals, bass), and Lee Tesche (guitar, programming, and production) — all Atlanta natives. The three have moved elsewhere in the past decade, but their self-titled debut, due out June 2 via Matador records, paints an uncommonly honest picture of Atlanta. Algiers’ aesthetic revives the South’s history of racial tension, social inequalities, and influential musical legacies into a fresh, radical sonic frenzy.

Mahan and Fisher looked up to Tesche before they ever started performing with him. The three made the suburban pilgrimage from Gwinnett and Cobb County in the early aughts when Atlanta was becoming a mecca for adventurous music. Tesche cut his teeth in noise and post-punk outfits while Fisher and Mahan traveled abroad in Newcastle, England, to study British History and identity politics. In 2006, the trio crafted its confrontational punk-gospel aesthetic around shared passions for music, politics, and revolutionary ideals. “The whole idea of Algiers is in some sense an archaeological process,” Mahan says. “It’s very much reminding people of the fundamental aspect of origin.”

Re-contextualized gospel music is nothing new. Blues, gospel, and slave spirituals remain America’s most influential musical traditions, forming the backbone of rock ‘n’ roll and beyond. Algiers reinvigorates Southern gospel traditions with the pained cries of racial injustice and a sensitivity toward the institutionalized violence keeping that injustice intact.

“As a band aesthetic, we coalesced around Nina Simone,” Fisher says. “We had a strong affinity for her fiery, political music. That aspect of her work always gets looked over.” The unflinching honesty Simone perfected on tracks such as “Mississippi Goddam” is heard throughout Algiers. Her stacked, bluesy piano key strikes drive “But She Was Not Flying,” her shout-a-long choruses propel lead single “Black Eunuch,” and the call and response participation integral to her performances threads through Algiers’ style.

While Simone had a penchant for jazzy show tunes, Algiers cuts its gospel roots with visceral dissonance. Before the trio experimented with gospel harmonies, Atlanta’s burgeoning experimental music scene formed the core of its influence. “I was always seeking these more left-field elements, but I was still struggling to find music I was interested in,” Tesche says, “It wasn’t until after 2003 or 2004 when it seemed like more spaces in Atlanta started opening for more adventurous music.”

In addition to briefly playing with local noise-rock outfit the Liverhearts, Tesche performs in the long-standing drone/post-punk quartet Lyonnais. The group refined its sound alongside Atlanta mainstays such as Deerhunter, Black Lips, and Mastodon. The Burn to Shine documentary series filmed that fertile scene in its yet-to-be-released Atlanta volume, curated by Tesche. The Atlanta edition was notable for featuring storied soul and funk singer the Mighty Hannibal alongside punk groups. “We were shining light on other scenes that had been forgotten,” Tesche says. “There was a really incredible soul scene in the ’60s that didn’t get as much notoriety as some of the other things over the years.”

Algiers’ debut makes an obvious, but rarely explored connection between punk’s antagonism and the civil unrest underpinning soul music. Making the politics and context of that connection explicitly clear drives the band’s ideology. “Oftentimes when you get to white pop music, because it’s very much built on appropriation, it gets rid of that rich social and political history from which black music sprang in the first place,” Mahan says. “In my mind we’re thrusting that back into the music sphere.”

Algiers debut is timely given the resurgence of racial tension into the national dialogue, but its political leanings have been present since the group’s inception. “We’ve been working on these songs for eight to nine years now,” Fisher says. “Institutional violence against people of color and lower classes is something we have been attuned to for much, much longer.”

The physical distance between its members formed an extensive gap between Algiers’ formation and the release of its debut. The prospect of actually being in the same place at the same time seemed impossible to the band considering the Atlantic Ocean split them in two. Algiers was painstakingly crafted and carefully put together piece by piece as the three traded snippets of ideas over the Internet. This piecemeal form of songwriting provided unexpected benefits for the group. “File swapping gets rid of ego because if someone sends you a file you’ll be able to sit on it for a couple days, so it allows that space for creativity and I think that totally plays into a cohesive element in our music,” Fisher says. Like dense gospel choirs or DIY punk communes, Algiers relies on the spirit of collaboration. On record that collaboration glues together Fisher’s propulsive choruses, Mahan’s menacing low end, and Tesche’s thick layers of distortion into a cohesive whole. Algiers ability to recreate its sound is still being tested in the live theater.

The trio’s first show was only last summer, yet earlier this year the group embarked on a high-profile tour opening for mainstream post-punk outfit Interpol. “We came from left-field and it was really just people looking at us confused, like we were a kid throwing a temper tantrum in front of a few thousand people,” Fisher says.

Though Algiers face a challenge releasing a debut album with little live experience, the group’s subversive blend of racial politics, post-punk poetry, and ferocious gospel come as a much-needed shot in the arm to an independent rock sphere afraid of music’s role in protest.